


Snowed In

by Dreadmartha



Category: Homestuck, Intermission - Fandom, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic), Stab Dads - Fandom
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Humanstuck, Just absolutely whorish tenderness and fluff here with a dash of pepper at the very end, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Romantic Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, headcanon heavy, stab dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:40:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26187334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dreadmartha/pseuds/Dreadmartha
Summary: Hearts finds an unexpected visitor stowed away in his home on the eve of a blizzard that's sure to shut down the city.
Relationships: Hearts Boxcars/Pickle Inspector
Comments: 6
Kudos: 9





	Snowed In

**Author's Note:**

> No music per se, just had this story in my head and really enjoyed putting it down on paper. But here, enjoy one of my favorite pieces of music that always makes me think of snowfall:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6ETMtbcKrc
> 
> Also enjoy PI's cat, who I've wanted to name Frida Calico for damn near nine years now.

The blizzard had been coming on for days but, of course, Hearts hadn’t gotten out to the store until the stark white snow sky finally opened up. He made it as quick a run as he could, loaded the truck up with bread and milk and everything else they’d need to be snowed in for a few days. Batteries, toilet paper, tomatoes, hot chocolate mix and bars of chocolate for when the instant stuff ran out. A little cinnamon and whipped cream and he’d blow Tavros’s socks right off.

School had been cancelled late the night before, a bulletin Hearts and Tavros stayed up in front of the TV to watch. Maybe his boy was just getting older but Hearts had been surprised that the final decision didn’t have him jumping out of the armchair beside Hearts’s. 

It was almost like someone had whispered the results to him ahead of time.

But it was late, and Hearts had an early morning with money to pick up and errands to run and suddenly he was driving home through the drifting feathers of early snow. 

The storm itself wouldn’t hit until that evening but the streets were already being clouded with white. It turned to slush almost at once but as he drove around Hearts saw plenty of it building hopefully in the street, as bright and fluffy as an alley kid’s dream.

Tavros and the other kids had been layered in sweaters and scarves and coats and gloves and then let loose to play in the alley out back. They were building a rough fort out of the starter snow as Hearts's truck prowled passed. He honked his horn and all the kids looked up and immediately started pelting the truck with thin snowballs. 

He noticed Tavros beaming at him and giving his father a thumbs up as Hearts turned down passed the alley. 

Hearts didn’t wonder about that until he was shouldering the front door of the duplex open, his arms full of groceries, and he found a calico cat stretching lengthwise across his front hall. 

Hearts and Tavros did not have a cat.

“Miss Frida?” Hearts addressed her and Frida Calico meowed back a loud, bright squawk. She rolled once, her round sausage shaped middle seeming to be still on the floor as her black and chestnut spots moved across it. She stood, turned in a circle blinking her big sage green eyes at Hearts, and pranced down the hall into the kitchen. “Hey--What’re you doing here, girly?”

Hearts followed her into the kitchen. She picked a spot at the exact center of the working kitchen’s floor, sat there and became the prettiest, fattest cat statue you ever did see. 

“You’re a real funny girl,” Hearts told her, setting the groceries down along the counters and having to side step her so she could keep her spot in the middle of the floor. He looked at the long stacks of tall brown paper bags in front of him. Maybe he might possibly have overbought a little…

“Where’s your Pop?” He turned away from the over abundance of sauce and soup and chili and baked eggplant parmesan supplies and addressed the calico. “What’d you do with him?”

She swung her tail over the floor, squawked at him, and watched as Hearts nosed into the living room. No Pickle Inspector. He looked out the sliding glass back door into the backyard, still no Pickle Inspector. He came into the front hall and opened a door and called for him down the basement stairs. 

Nothing.

“You know, don’t you girly cat?” Hearts haunched in front of her and offered a few scritching fingers. Frida came over to sample them readily, her back arching up and leaning into Hearts’s hand as he scratched down her back to the base of her fluffy tail. She noised again, her voice still that of a tough street cat who’d only ever adapted to life as a spoiled indoor cat. She purred loudly, pranced from under Hearts’s hand and across the kitchen out of sight behind the breakfast bar. 

Hearts followed her. 

Frida’s bowl was set up by the doorway into the living room. Beside it were her water bowl and a tired canvas tote bag printed as part of a pledge drive by a local radio station. 

Inside the bag were cans of wet food, Frida’s favorite multicolor tassel on a stick and the orange angler fish plush toy she liked to carry around like it was her baby. 

He also recognized his favorite tupperware, still stained red from the two and a half quarts of baked ziti it had held. 

Frida circled, chirping, in front of him and turned and turned in front of her food bowl. It was nearly full of scraps of wet food, the only exception being a spot about the size of her pretty little cat nose in the center of the bowl where the porcelain showed through. 

“That’s awful sad,” Hearts leaned down and smoothed her face back flat, scratching along her puffy cheek to run a finger neatly under her spotted chin. “But that ain’t what I asked you about, is it?”

Frida purred hard, leaning into Hearts’s hand, then blinked her eyes open. They were wide, black and crossed for a moment before she drew back and honked at him. 

How could he not see the bold indignicity that was being visited upon the sweet baby who was the cat?

“So you won’t spill?” Hearts asked one last time. Frida burbled at him, turning once more in front of her food bowl. The tall rows of grocery bags watched him over Hearts’s shoulder. 

“Alright, well, first things first.”

He put away the groceries. 

The view from the window over the sink showed falling leaves of snow, long white shimmers against the neighboring building. A soft daylight shone in and with it the relaxed, omnipotent quiet of the storm. He looked from the window into the sink. It had been littered with his coffee cup and pans and dishes from a late breakfast that morning. Now it was empty, shiny, and scrubbed looking.

Hearts didn’t worry that the rest of the Crew had found Frida’s owner, that anyone but he and his son might know that Pickle Inspector was anywhere nearby. The quiet of the snow prevented any worrying and really, if he had been caught Hearts didn’t figure the rest of the Crew would stay quiet enough for Pickle Inspector to do the dishes and clean the sink before they confronted him. Much less for Hearts to come dawdling home, put away the bread and milk, and hear nothing about it. 

Once the groceries were away Hearts went upstairs to see where the detective had hidden himself. 

“Inspector?” he asked the second floor hallway. 

No answer. No noise from the master suite at the end of the hall. Wherever he was Pickle Inspector wasn’t noodling around to figure out how Hearts’s shower worked. 

Tavros’s room was just as it had that morning, looking every bit like a tornado had hit it. If Hearts had known he would’ve told his son to at least make his bed. 

That just left Hearts’s room, at the end of the hall, the door closed as he’d left it that morning. 

He came down the hall, feeling the temperature drop a degree or two as he moved into the front of the house. The weather always pressed in against the building here, making his room hotter in the summer and colder in the winter but, hey, what was a dad supposed to do but give his son the climate controlled room?

Hearts opened the bedroom door. 

The room was dark, the heavy curtains pulled across the bay windows that looked down onto the street. Three thin seams of light glowed softly between the curtains without casting much into the room. By their frail light he found a well worn duffel bag open at the foot of his own dresser. Loosely folded clothes inside it, five of six paperbacks of varying degrees of pulpery, and a lot of loose pages of printer paper with scrawling notes folded in against a cardboard map and a wild, scattered damage of loose dice Hearts couldn’t hope to count. 

The bedroom was a fraction colder than the rest of the house, so Hearts couldn't blame the shape curled up under seven blankets in bed for being a little chilly. 

Five of the blankets Hearts recognized from Pickle Inspector’s own collection, the other two had been on his bed when he’d left it this morning.

He also recognized the lines of a body snuggled under the heap of blankets, as well as a few sandy blonde waves peeking out from where a pillow had been pulled inside the top of the heap.

Hearts closed his door and set the lock softly, sitting on the bed just as quietly and kicking off his boots. He leaned his back against the headboard with a sigh, the loudest sound in the room as he took his place next to the figure who’d made themself so comfy in his bed. 

As soon as he stilled in place, watching the lump under the blankets, a long hand sneaked out of the cocoon and found his thigh. 

It smoothed up his leg, following the seam of his pants up to Hearts’s belt, then up along his belly. The hand curled against his ribs on the other side, a long bare arm sliding out behind it and wrapping around him. 

A blonde head with a lot of dreamy forehead and a pair of heavy lidded eyes floated up out of the blankets. It pushed one cheek into Hearts’s belly and nestled there, never bothering to open its eyes. The arm around him squeezed and Pickle Inspector let out a sigh. 

“Seven b-blankets and you’re still the warmmmest part of the b-bed.” Hearts heard him smiling although he couldn’t see most of his face, just a lot of wavy blonde hair and a piece of forehead. He spoke slowly yet he sounded much more awake than Hearts guessed he should be.

“It’s a specialty of mine.” He touched the bare arm folded around him and set his other hand on Pickle Inspector’s head. The other man hummed and turned into Hearts’s hand so his fingers carded through his hair. His eyes stayed closed. “You wanna tell me what on Earth you’re doing here, Inspector?”

The blonde cleared his throat and blinked his blue eyes open. For a moment they were just like Frida’s, soft, dark, and cross eyed, but then his keen mind shone through. He shifted enough to lay with his chin against Hearts’s stomach, where he could look up and see the big man’s face. He smiled, finding a look of amused bewilderment there. 

“Tavros and I p-planned this out,” He said, eyes falling closed slowly as Hearts kept petting his hair. “He’ll be off school for a few days, the c-city will be shut d-down because of the snnnow. And, well,”

Here his eyes opened in a bright glimmer. 

“My apartment is j-just an icebox in this kind of weather. I c-couldn’t do that to poor Frida, could I?”

“So you got my son to sneak you in? What if me and the Crew got work to do?” Hearts moved his fingers through Pickle Inspector’s hair, put his hand over the back of his brainy head and gave it a soft shake. “What if we’re fixing to get up to something? You’ll get caught for staying here, y’know, and then there’ll be real trouble.”

“Is that right?” Pickle Inspector moved his hand up Hearts’s belly to his chest. He found the St. Christopher hanging from the gold chain around his neck and bounced it a couple times on his fingernail. “B-Because Tavros mmmentioned a lot of staying in with hot chocolate and old c-claymation gladiator movies.”

“He really spilled the whole plan, huh?” Hearts sighed out a laugh. Pickle Inspector nodded.

“I mmmay have promised to help b-build a D’n’D fort for him in the b-basement,” He admitted. “And to play a session or four b-before the weekend is out.”

“Alright, I see it now. I see.” Hearts nodded his head slowly and sank down to lay beside Pickle Inspector in bed. He stayed on top of the sheets, leaning a pillow under his head and holding the detective’s cheek in his other hand. “So you bribed my kid into smuggling you and your cat in for a romantic shut in weekend.”

“Things have been so b-busy,” Pickle Inspector said softly, putting his long hand over the one on his cheek. He smiled, his sleepy face showing a soft, dear smile in the dim half light. “When was the l-last time we h-had a weekend to spend together?”

He tilted his head, a quirk that Hearts knew well by now. On anyone else it would be a perplexed little gesture just to look cute, but on Pickle Inspector it was all genuine perplexation and that made it that much sweeter. His head tilted further, turned into Hearts’s palm and kissed him. 

“I wanted to be here with you,” His delicate voice was near and Pickle Inspector brushed their noses together, moving Hearts’s hand down his cheek to the corner of his jaw and down his swan’s neck. “That’s worth mmmore than a little s-sneaking around.”

Hearts leaned forward and kissed him. No one had taken such a chance to be with him before. Pickle Inspector’s lips were soft, his skin was hot, Hearts felt him smiling against his mouth. 

“And I p-promise to pay up,” He said on a light laugh. “Tavros will r-reach tenth level b-before he knows what happened.”

“There’s the Inspector I know,” he let Pickle Inspector guide his hand down into the cocoon of blankets, along his naked collarbones and over one bare shoulder. “But tell me this, what are you gonna do if somebody decides to pop over? Diamonds and Spades are right across the street, Clubs is right next door. This really ain’t a snoop friendly block.”

Pickle Inspector hummed, leaning his forehead against Hearts’s. Hearts saw a few things flash behind his eyes, he guessed it may be a weather report, an assurance that they were in for two feet of snow at least, and that none of the Crew would willingly fight their doors open in the middle of the storm to come by Hearts’s place asking for a cup of sugar.

“Drat,” he said in a light, theatrical voice. “I didn’t think of that at all.” 

He brought Hearts’s hand over his bare chest, moving his palm so it curved just so and held a long sweep of bony ribs.

Pickle Inspector moved his shoulders in a small shrug, his eyes softening with a lovey grin. It deepened the blush already rising up his neck. Hearts’s hand moved lower still, down a stretch of naked navel and below to more soft, bare skin.

“Maybe I had b-better just stay here, huh?” Pickle Inspector asked. “Wh-Where I’m nice and safe.”

Hearts puffed out a breath, wide eyes blinking before he collected himself enough to answer. He shifted towards Pickle Inspector, his hand exploring on its own now, and nodded. The detective shivered closer to him, batting his eyes.

“Yeah, I think I like that idea.” His face was hot, a deep red blooming across it. “Stay right here as long as you like.”


End file.
